Sharing Thunderbird Mails Between Linux and Windows

[Manish Kathuria]

In order to make the same set of emails accessible on both Windows XP 
Home and Fedora Core on my dual boot laptop, I have created a separate 
FAT32 partition which I use just for storing the Thunderbird mail files 
and directories. While working on Linux I mount this partition through 
an appropriate entry in /etc/fstab and have configured the Thunderbird 
profile in Linux in such a manner that it points to the files and 
directories on this mounted FAT32 filesystem for accessing mails for 
different accounts. I also make sure that I am using the same version of 
Thunderbird on Windows and Linux.

Things had been working perfectly fine except for some small hitches but 
recently after I compacted the mail folders and deleted trash while 
working on Linux, the whole partition got corrupted and a number of 
mails were lost. Though I was able to repair the FAT32 mail partition 
and recover most of the files, its created some doubts in my mind 
regarding this whole arrangement and robustness of FAT32 filesystem 
under Linux.

Has anyone tried something similar ? Its important for me to have the 
mails accessible in Windows as well as Linux but not at the cost of data 
corruption and loss. What all can be done to make this arrangement more 
stable and robust and prevent any data corruption ?

I would really appreciate some suggestions or pointers in this regard.

Thanks,

Manish